The present invention relates generally to floating roadways capable of supporting road vehicles and more particularly to an assembly forming a floating landing bridge which consists of a floats arranged one adjacent the other and connected together throughout the extent of the roadway.
Roadways of the type to which the present invention relates are appropriately utilized where existing harbor facilities are not sufficient to enable the loading and unloading of cargo ships in adequate time. Under such conditions it is usually necessary to construct provisional mooring places in rather short periods of time so that the seagoing vessels may readily unload their cargo without requiring that they be moored or docked at the permanent harbor facilities. Thus, since coastal area ships are capable of anchoring almost anywhere it is usually possible to unload such ships from points outside of the permanent harbor facilities if a floating roadway or other suitable structure is provided to extend between the harbor and the ship thus enabling road vehicles to travel between the two points.
Floating bridges consisting of individual steel pontoons arranged one adjacent the other are known. When such pontoons are rigidly connected together, single loads such as wheel loads of road vehicles are indeed distributed over several adjacent pontoons. However, the bending moments which occur due to the load transmission to several of the pontoons will be extremely great and as a result the forces which must be transmitted by the connecting means between the pontoons become rather large. A movable connection such as an intermediate bridge placed on adjacent pontoons operates to effect load distribution in such a manner that the loads which are applied are absorbed only by the pontoons which are actually loaded. Thus, since bending moments cannot be transmitted by the movable connections such transmission is avoided. Accordingly, load transmission between the pontoons does not occur. As a result the loads which are applied must be limited to loads not greater than that which can be absorbed by the respective directly loaded pontoons.
The present invention is directed toward the provision of a floating roadway, particularly one which is useful as a floating landing bridge, consisting of individual floats so connected together that in a simple and safe manner the loads of the floats may be distributed over a relatively large length of the roadway thus enabling loads to be carried which will exceed the carrying capacity of an individual single float or pontoon.